Perspectives on where our world is heading from a vantage point in Denver, Colorado.

30 November 2011

Best Practices In Depression Treatment Elusive

There are multiple modalities for treating mental health conditions like unipolar depression. Many of them seem to do some good. But neither drugs nor any particular modality of therapy has any clear advantage over the others, according to a recent metastudy on the subject.

The overall results showed that while CBT was clearly better than doing nothing, it was pretty much the same as antidepressants, and other psychotherapies, in adults with depression[.]

Given the length of time that psychologists and psychiatrists have identified and clearly defined the need for a treatment for unipolar depression, the number of very smart people who have devoted whole careers to addressing this issue, the fact that this condition is sufficiently common and impairing that it is on anyone's top five list of nation and world's mental health treatment needs, the sheer number of trials that have been conducted of various drugs and treatment modalities, and the degree to which we understand the mechanism of what is going on, it is really quite depressing.